


fifteen ways to never give up

by arachnistar



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Experimental Style, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnistar/pseuds/arachnistar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Doomsday. Getting back home isn't easy, but you won't give up. You can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fifteen ways to never give up

**Author's Note:**

> The concept for this comes from Daphne Gottlieb's lovely poem [fifteen ways to stay alive](http://www.daphnegottlieb.com/poems/15ways.html). As for applying it to a character, I owe it to escaped-from's wonderful Twilight fic [fifteen ways to turn into a monster](http://escaped-from.tumblr.com/post/46219425939/fifteen-ways-to-turn-into-a-monster-twilight-an) which I highly recommend even if you don't like Twilight (like me) because it's a beautiful piece of writing reclaiming Bella's characterization.

1\. You do not know this but somewhere there are those that worship you. There are also those who fear you. Your words spread throughout the universe, a beacon, life and death in the palm of your hands, an abomination, a goddess to bend reality. That is what you are to them, but they do not know the secret.

2\. There is only one way that sentence could have ended but the words still matter. Not hearing them still matters and his absence still feels like someone forgot a knife in your chest, like there’s an empty space beside you where he should fit, like everything in you has frozen over.

3\. People tell you to move on. When you smile and laugh, they will say time is working its cure. It isn’t but you let them believe.

4\. Chips make you nauseous. You throw them out and stick with Indian.  

5\. Stars flicker out and the world gets a little colder, a little more like your shuttered eyes. You want to light them all again.  

6\. Wear leather. It was his armor and now it is yours.

7\. You are not the victim. You are not the blonde woman who dies at the start of every movie. You are not the little girl lost in the woods messing around with the unknown. You are the wolf. (But sometimes, when it’s late at night and no one else is around, you feel like that little girl.)  

8\. He was wrong. Sometimes you need a gun to survive and it does not make you less. It is not the only thing he was wrong about.

9\. Spend your days pretending you don’t dream, that you don’t toss and turn in bed all night while specters and beasts run through your head, that you don’t subsist on caffeine. Otherwise, they will pull you from the program. You can rest when you are done.

10\. Jump and jump and jump. Do not look back, do not look down, do not look up at the sky and wonder if this darkness is the end. Just keep jumping and landing. One day you will fly.

11\. A dead body does not mean everything is over. It can’t. You have worked too hard to fail. You have worked too hard to see a corpse, too hard to see the universes rip themselves apart without him, too hard to feel this hopeless and alone. This is wrong.

12\. She will die. She will sacrifice herself for a better world, one where he doesn’t die. You wish you could help, say something comforting, but there is nothing to say.    

13\. It’s him. It’s really him. You wrap your arms around him and he pulls you close. It feels like coming home.  

14\. When he traces your scars and asks about them, don’t tell him. He has his nightmares and now you have yours. Take comfort in the fact that you are finally together and move on.

15\. Love is the secret.


End file.
